The Country Needs A Framework For A Universal Social Security Net

Context: Everyone should have access to all welfare provisions, but our coverage leaves out too many people.

Poor social security apparatus in India: Supreme Court – “Problem is not the absence of legislation, but the way schemes are implemented” - 

      
      

• Mishandling of migrant crisis during pandemic: Many migrants left without livelihood and food had to walk back to their villages; their suffering worsened with the unfolding of the second wave.
• Implementation issues in the One Nation One Ration Card (ONOR) Scheme: Including exclusion of beneficiaries, hardship for exercising entitlement under National Food Security Act (NFSA), failure of biometric identification, absence of e-Point of Sale machines and ambiguity in entitlement across states.
• Issues with NFSA: 
• No mechanism to identify beneficiaries as Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) survey conducted during 2011-12 not updated since then; Its quality also varies across regions - it is generally more robust in rural areas, but unreliable in urban precincts.
• Huge margin of exclusion error: Based on Census 2011, the total number of eligible beneficiaries should be 813.5 million. However, actual beneficiaries stood at 793.9 million by May 2021. 
• Neglect of unorganized sector workers: The database of unorganized- sector workers and migrants has seen little updation so far, as revealed by the affidavits of various states. 

Way forward: The larger message from SC is the need for laws on social protection that are universal and accessible to every worker, irrespective of place of residence or work.

• Such a framework for universal social protection should not just comprise a set of legislations but also have the requisite flexibility and political will to be of aid to every citizen of the country at all times.